


Three Infinities

by satincolt



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Introspection, M/M, No Angst, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 18:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15249015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satincolt/pseuds/satincolt
Summary: Three infinities, and the third is Shiro.Keith contemplates his life, infinity, the Universe, and his love for Shiro.





	Three Infinities

The solar winds of distant stars whistle in Keith’s ears, flipping his hair about gently while his gaze gets lost far in the deepest depths of the space yawning in front of him.  His thoughts run wild a thousand lightyears away from him.  Here, he feels so very alone.  It at once comforts and terrifies him.  All around him, the cosmos slowly revolve like celestial ballroom dancers completely unaware of the tiny speck of life floating between them.

 _It should be like this,_ he thinks, _that I’m insignificant in the grand scheme of this all._

But it’s not.  He’s far too important and it rattles him.  Why should he of all people be so critical to the welfare of life in the Universe?  He, who grew up alone and staring quietly into the stars, who turned his back on other humans in favor of drifting in the space inside his own head; he who now sits perched on the edge of the ship, his legs dangling out into the void, so exquisitely alone and so comforted by that odd fact?

Beneath his feet—but beneath is such a relative term; there is nothing objective this deep in space, unmoored from the sensibilities of a planet—a hundred million miles beneath his feet, Keith watches a nebula so enormous it feels like he could reach out and drag his toes through its dust.  The false-color images of heavenly bodies are just that:  false.  Eye-to-eye with a nebula that’s never even been conceived of by human eyes, Keith’s heart aches faintly at how dim, how monochromatic, the birth of new stars truly is.  It is painstakingly slow, the vast scale of it blunting the violence of the fission and fusion of billions of tons of incomprehensibly ancient elements.

The Universe has carried on without him for eternity.  Keith’s successes and failures have never meant anything to it; his nineteen years meager even on planet Earth but meaning even less to hundred-thousand-year-old infant stars.  It doesn’t matter if he will ever make mistakes, because everything will carry on regardless.  The galaxies will continue to spin and stars continue to burn just as they always have and always will.  Keith is just a tiny nip of them that has coalesced into something capable of admiring, however feebly, the rest of it all.

Until now, that has all been true.  But with Keith becoming a Paladin of Voltron, every different nip of coalesced stardust, every buzzing bit of life so insignificant on its own, has cuddled together to form a living star that Keith has the responsibility of holding.  He gets to decide now which lives to sanction, which lives to dispose of.  It’s his hand that turns the fantastic electricity of life back into the slow-fast-freezing-hot stardust of the nebulae waltzing about him.  It’s absolutely too much.  Keith’s life is the culmination of accepting an insignificant spot in the Universe.  He isn’t capable of holding any more importance because he was never designed to, never made himself ready to.

Footsteps pad towards him.  Keith slowly leverages his eyes away from the disappointing but still-enchanting nebula to peek over his shoulder.  Shiro approaches him sleepily, but with a small smile in place.  He sits down cross-legged next to Keith, not quite so frighteningly close to the edge of oblivion, a half a foot back from the end of the deck where Keith wiggles his toes idly.

“Hey.”  Shiro’s voice is barely more than a whisper.  Raspy, tired.

Keith folds his hands in his lap.  “Hey.”  His voice comes out stronger, not having been dulled by sleep yet.

“What’re you doing out here, Keith?  It’s the middle of the night,” Shiro says quietly, his barely-awake eyes reflecting the sparkling stars when Keith meets his gaze.

“There’s no such thing as night anymore, Shiro.”  Keith sighs.  “I came out here to think.”

Shiro doesn’t respond immediately other than a slow nod of the head.  Eventually he asks, “what were you thinking about?”

Keith tries to grab at his thoughts, but he might as well be grabbing at nebula dust the way they slip through his fingers.  “Dunno… the Universe… being alone.”

“You never have to be alone, Keith; I’m here for you.”  Shiro’s voice is stronger now but still soft and gravelly; earnest.

Keith shakes his head.  “I was alone for a long time before I met you.”  He looks over at Shiro again and takes in the slightly hurt expression on his face and knows Shiro well enough to know that it’s disappointment in himself for not finding Keith sooner, for failing to alleviate that which he perceives as Keith’s pain.  So Keith continues.  “It’s not bad, being alone.  I don’t think of it that way.  I know I don’t mean anything to the Universe—” Shiro’s brow crumples with poorly-masked distress— “but that’s reassuring to me.  I don’t know how to explain it.  The mistakes I make, don’t matter.  There’s always something so much bigger than me and it’s always been here.  It’ll always be here, regardless of me.”

Keith wonders if this is why people like to believe in a god.  Because it fills him with so much calm, completes the busy holes in his mind that fret constantly.  There is something bigger and more absolute than his existence and it’s so grand his brain can’t even process a fraction of it.  A tiny smile graces Keith’s lips at the thought.  Shiro doesn’t say anything.  The two sit in silence and contemplate infinity, the notion of it stretching all around them in directions they can’t even name filling Keith with a strange calm euphoria.

Then Shiro’s warm hand settles over Keith’s where it’s braced against the deck.  The feeling of it reels Keith back into his body from where he was floating out in the star field, pulling his mind from the infinity without to the infinity within.  Everything—all this, all the thoughts he can think and the feelings he can feel, every bit of the Universe he can comprehend—happens inside his head.  The deeper he goes into the space between his neurotransmitters and synapses, the more it opens up into his own private infinity inside his mind.  There’s a quote, old and often spoken to the point of being dulled, about being infinite and containing multitudes.  Keith would be hard-pressed to attribute it correctly, but he understands it now like never before.  There is the absolute infinity of the Universe outside of his body, but even within the 1500cc of his cranium, there is a subjective infinity just as vast and wonderful.

The hand covering Keith’s own rubs back and forth gently, once again tugging him away from infinity and mooring him in physical touch.  Keith blinks several times and looks down at their hands, then up at Shiro’s face.  Shiro is giving him the softest little smile which, when Keith catalogues his own facial features, he finds out he’s wearing, too.

“I don’t know where your mind is or what you’re thinking, but you look happy,” Shiro murmurs.  Keith nods.

“I am happy.”

Shiro’s hand moves up Keith’s arm until it cradles his cheek.  Keith hadn’t realized how chilled the air was up here until Shiro’s palm feels like a flame on his skin, his eyes drifting shut to focus on the sensation.  He leans into the touch greedily, seeking that special kind of Shiro-heat that seems to diffuse through Keith’s body instantly.

“Let’s go back to bed,” Shiro says.  Keith hums and tips forward blindly into Shiro’s sphere of warmth.  The hand on his cheek guides his head and Keith’s lips bump into Shiro’s.  Contentment blooms in every part of Keith’s body simultaneously.  He leans into the kiss, surrendering fully to the renewed feeling of calm euphoria and floating on such simple loving touches while still being fully grounded in them.

There must be three infinities at least, Keith amends his earlier thoughts.  Of course there’s the Universe and the vast microscopic space of his brain, but there’s also this wonderful infinity that unfolds like an origami flower whenever Shiro touches him.  Simple soft kisses Keith loses himself in, relishing the pure tactile bliss of Shiro’s lips and hands.  He could wander for days in those feelings, drifting like he does in his mind and in space, but paradoxically still anchored to the here and now by touch. 

Three infinities, and the third is Shiro.

**Author's Note:**

> Gentle, sappy thoughts at 2am


End file.
